The house sat on cement blocks and had screen doors to keep the air moving. I would lie on the cool cement porch beneath the hornet’s nest, daydreaming with the drops of light splashing on my eyelashes. One day I discovered the earth moving under the house—it was a big family of garter snakes. What a discovery! Mother said to leave them alone, they weren’t bothering anyone. I watched them the way children watch tattooed ladies at the circus, with a mixture of fear and delight.
Sugarfoot was more than content in the new house. There were mice and birds to hunt and saucers of milk and Purina cat food every morning. One day I watched her stalking a bird and was inspired to test her technique. Creeping slowly on my hands and knees while thinking, “You cannot see me, you cannot see me,” I moved as if I was not moving. The bird was about eight feet away. It did not move as I came toward it.
I knew there was a relationship between the bird and the cat that allowed the cat to be unseen, as if nature anesthetized the prey when a predator came near. I understood this so instinctively I figured I could also have that relationship with a bird and be unseen. I was still working as God’s little scientist.
I kept my unblinking eye on the bird. I was the cat. So smoothly and slowly I crossed the distance between me and the wren, slowly, ever so slowly. Then I moved quick—and captured my first bird!
Gently I picked it up from our front yard and brought it into the house. Nobody could be as surprised and flabbergasted as I, certainly not my mother who was more concerned about the fact of a bird in the house than my claim to have just performed magic. This was the first of four birds I would catch in my life.
In my childhood desert playground, I roamed among date trees, orange blossoms, praying mantises, and the deafening humming of cicadas singing in an enchanted dream of lost worlds. Each day was followed by a brighter sun set in a blaze of celestial colored sunsets that were erased by bigger and bigger full moons. I was slowly replacing my invisible friends with real animals.
My invisible friend, Boshla, had also moved to the new house and sometimes he still accompanied me on safaris into the desert. My mother was concerned about me talking to people that no one could see, so she asked my father to speak to me about it.
Father sat next to me on the porch and asked me if Boshla was there right now. I answered:
“Yes he is.”
“You know you’re getting older now Rickie Lee. It’s time to tell Boshla goodbye.”
I was confused.
“Your mother thinks it’s time for you to stop talking to things that aren’t there. So tell him goodbye now.”
I could no more tell Boshla goodbye than I could tell my father goodbye. But I said,
“Okay Daddy.” And then to make a show of it:
I put my finger to my lips and whispered, “Shhhhh,” so that Boshla wouldn’t make any noise that my daddy could hear. Dad saw me do this and smiled, then went back inside the house.
There was no more discussion about getting rid of my imaginary friend.
Years may go by . . .
Each day I would visit Wick’s Market, the family-owned grocery facing the Black Canyon Highway. Mr. Wick cut the meat in back, and the cement aisles smelled like bread and milk. There were ice cream sandwiches in the deep caverns of a cold, free-standing refrigerator. Mr. and Mrs. Wick owned the market and I had a crush on Jack, their son. I was eight and he was twenty-eight, a slight man with receding hair. I proposed marriage to him one afternoon and he said most earnestly, “Rickie Lee, I think that when you grow up you are not even going to remember me. But if you do, I promise, I will go out with you.” I was sure my feelings would last another . . . let’s see . . . seven years would make me pretty and old enough for Jack . . .
The Wicks had a bubble gum machine filled with beautiful plastic diamond and ruby rings you could win for a penny, and I mystically conquered that machine. I could feel the bubble gum mechanism and learned how to turn it just so to get the rings. I won ring after ring. Customers marveled. “Watch me!” I called to anyone who would look. Long blonde braids, many rings on my fingers, barefoot and deeply tanned, with no front teeth, the world was mine.
I had been gathering pop bottles from the field next to the highway (they grew wild there) and was carrying them back to Wick’s Market to collect the deposit, two cents a bottle. I could make about a dime, then hit the bubble gum machine. That was when I noticed the ants walking toward the desert. I had seen them many times but this morning I followed them to a newly tarred parking lot. Red fire ants with jaws like crocodiles. They burrowed into the hot asphalt, fire-walking across it to the dirt where they would attack and kill any unsuspecting bug. I found hundreds there crawling over each other as they entered and exited their ant cave. What was it like to be ant-sized? What did they see when they got inside? I was crouching down low, mesmerized. Then I felt something crawling on me—ouch—and then—ahh!—they were all over me. Red ants bite harder than black, and fire ants are the worst of all. I panicked. AHHHH!
I was running like a child on fire because I was a child on fire! There were ants in my underpants. There were ants in my underarms, even my hair. They were crawling on me, biting me everywhere. I was screaming as I ran, and I had quit trying to get them off me.
Mama came out the kitchen door, jumped over the little white fence into the parking lot, and started hitting me to get the ants off. So now I was getting bit and hit. She pulled me into the yard and yelled at me to stand still. Yelling saves lives! She was spraying me with the hose now, and I was naked. I didn’t care.
Wait! What if Jack Wick sees me? Oh no! That would be worse than the ants and the hitting. Sure enough, he was out there too, and he heard me screaming. I looked over at him but he had quickly started back into the store, saving my modesty after making sure Mom had saved my life.
My first month in the third grade started out well enough. Mrs. Schultz passed around our new books. I loved the smell of the paper. I pressed my nose into the book imagining what the coming year would be like, all the great things I would do and the friends I would have.
Mama had bought me a six-month-old colt named Geronimo. It was a big investment, and neither of us knew how dangerous it was to raise a stallion. Buying the horse for me was the greatest thing my mother could have done in the midst of the changes that were happening to me. Even as I lost my footing at the new school, the colt meant that dreams could come true. If something as magical as a horse could land in my backyard, who knows what else might land there?
The third grade was nothing like the second grade. I could not seem to make friends, or initiate games, and my natural ability to organize was simply not appreciated. The happy and extroverted child I had been receded into a shy character. I began going to the nurse every day. Perhaps my body wasn’t sick, but my heart was. I was lonely.
West Side Story
Then one weekend my big sister took me to see West Side Story at the Palms Theater down on Central Avenue. The movie had an immediate impact on my life. West Side Story became a touchstone, an initiator of friendships, a secret code between outcasts. When I finally had a chance to perform music of my own, West Side Story was the backdrop I brought to my stage.
I received the West Side Story stereophonic LP record for Christmas. Now that I had the music, Riff was alive again. I knelt with Maria in agonizing grief. I was learning the essence of theater using experimentation and improvisation. I memorized every nuance of the orchestration as the Jets and I ran through the sagebrush, snapping our fingers, and soaring over imaginary city streets.
One spring day during recess, I was singing the “Jet Song” on the playground and I noticed a little girl watching me. The next day there were two, three, and then more. I drew a crowd!